From the conference: Disappointment

My disappointment
I think I am spoiled. Well, I know I am spoiled and entitled. I know I expect to get what I want and often even expect to get it when I want it. I think I stay balanced because generally, I think I do not want for that much. What I want here, from this conference is simple. I want to feel a shared sense of commitment to a mission and an obvious of course of action which corresponds with that mission. I have been taught through community organizing, there are to types of organizations: those which are mission driven and those which are program driven. Program driven institutions drive me a little nutty. Action for actions sake feels wasteful (and I have a near visceral reaction to being wasteful of anything.) People invest time and energy into an event for what end? Maybe I am stating this a bit in the extreme. Here is an example, when I am at services, I want more than just to pass the time in services. I want to walk out of prayer feeling moved somehow. Moved to act, moved to be a better person, moved to unite and connect with my fellow pray-ers...something. And that does not truly happen by accent. The kernels for those responses are within the liturgy. It is incumbent (I feel) upon the community and leadership to create a service which will help to elicit the desired response. What do we want this prayer on this day to inspire us to do and feel?

The same is true of a human being. As an individual in this world, I want to be asking myself the same questions of the institution of my Self. What do I want my actions, my world, to inspire me to do and feel? What is my purpose? What is my goal? When the mission is clear, the actions fall in line. It is simply (getting clear on the mission...well, that is the tricky part) If I just go and do whatever I fancy in a given moment, my life looks and feels scattered...like buckshot (I am certain of this because much of how I have lived the past year has been buckshot...then I remember my mission for the past year has been exploration-then all the actions, explorations, various trips, conferences and events make sense. All is simple, clear, everything fits in to my greater purpose, my greater direction.) Acting for its own sake feels very scattered to me. Acting for a greater purpose brings meaning to my life, it connects me to God, to those around me, to my self even. Beginning my determining my focus seems so important to me...essential like the air I breath.

And in order to determine my focus, I need to know who I am, what I am about. What makes me passionate? What interests me? What do I like? What gets me excited, mad, glad, sad, scared, etc? All this knowledge comes from sharing time with myself. I know, some of this sounds silly, but I am thinking of the community organizing model. Through knowing other people and all these things about them, we can harness our social networking abilities to act in a way that is direct and satisfying.

All this is true here as well at this conference. Here is what I want. I want us to dedicate our actions right now towards coming to know one another and determine the shape and scope of this organization. I want us to focus on getting to know ourselves well first. Then, use that knowledge to determine if we are an institution of some kind and if so, what is our mission? What is our purpose? Once that is clear, then the follow up actions are simple, straightforward and obvious. Is our purpose to further Jewish-Christian dialogue? Is it to further inter-religious discussion regardless of faith group? Is it to create strong relationships between the established institutions of The Church and of the Jewish People and the common man within those faith groups? Different missions will lead to differing responses, differing actions.

My frustration here has been that we are not aiming towards any of that. Or, if we are, it is so implicit, tacit or obscured that I do not see it (and maybe I am not looking hard enough or in the right places...I do not know...)

As we drew to the end of the conference, there was a desire to act, to continue and further the beautiful relationships being developed here. Amen to that!! And the response is, we have all been asked, between now and November, to engage in two out of three of the following actions; create an visit of a local Christian religious leader to a local Jewish institution which will model the upcoming papal visit to the Old Synagogue in Rome, engage in any act of social action in any Jewish-Christian interfaith environment, or ...well, this is my point, I can't even remember the third thing we have been asked to do, it is so random, and without greater purpose. I feel like we are 55 people trying to clear a forest, each of us pushing on a different tree trying to knock it down. We are definitely in the same forest, but we are unlikely to make much head way in our endeavor. BUT, if all 55 of us were working on one tree at a time...well, it would take a while, but slowly, slowly, we could knock them all down.

We have been called to act for its own sake and when asked to commit, I cried and said no. No, I am sorry. I will not stand here and push up against my tree alone. Only if we work together, only if we determine a more united course of action, a more focused sense of purpose, mission and problem to solve, only then will I join the effforts.

Everyone seemed so busy puzzling with their own trees that I feel no one heard me.

Thankfully, for me...there are many other forests with many other trees, and many other people willing to work as one...